Slashdot Mirror
AT&T Clarifies Data Limitations On "Unlimited" Data Plans
MojoKid writes "Several months ago, AT&T notified customers that it would begin throttling network speeds for users who exceeded a certain threshold, with the definitive throttle point defined as an imprecise "the top 5% of mobile data users." The company has issued a statement clarifying this policy after irate customers with unlimited data plans demanded to know what the cap was and how the company determined who should and shouldn't be throttled. The magic number is 3GB, which conveniently happens to be the maximum amount of tiered bandwidth AT&T will sell you. So why would AT&T want unlimited users to move to tiered pricing when its maximum tier is also set at 3GB? Simple — the amount of money the company makes on customers who exceed that 3GB limit. The fine print reads: 'If 3GB is exceeded, an additional 1 GB is automatically provided at a rate of $10 for each additional 1 GB.' Anyone using above 3GB on an unlimited plan is a customer who isn't paying enough for the privilege (from AT&T's perspective)."
In my experience, AT&T doesn't even deliver the data I bought. So when they throttle you at 3Gb, they may actually be throttling you at 1Gb (the difference is far larger than what can be explained by network overhead). Run a data counter on your phone to see what is actually going on, and compare that with the data they claim you used.
There is something inhertly wrong with an unlimited plan that is not unlimited. It's not about what is enough and what's not enough for most customers, it is simply that in this cases some customers are beind decieved ( because they expected to recieve something they were offered), to remedy this issue is to just don't call it unlimited. No one is forcing them to offer unlimited plans!
Generally, you cannot walk into a restaurant and just eat for as many days as you want, even when they advertise unlimited buffet. There are expected limits to unlimited offerings, and considering the state of the mobile network, it's not that surprise.
Better yet, get rid of the ridiculous idea of "data plans" in the first place. Charge users a certain per-megabyte fee on their bill for the data they use and offer them the option to pre-purchase data per-gigabyte at a discount.
When I shop, I make a bee line for the charts that compare services and their agreements- after consulting Consumer Reports to see if they have anything.
Advertisements and sales fluff are just lies - to state the obvious.
Once I was in a very large home center. There was the guy with the table calling people over to buy their overpriced installation services (if you compare prices they charge 40% more than you local contractor - even though they too use local contractors.)
Anyway, while he was giving me his BS spiel, I was looking at the brochure and noticed these asterisks by the "guarantees". When he asked if I had questions, I just replied, "See these asterisks? That means somewhere in the fine print you're going to screw me."
"Oh no no! "
"And under state law, whatever comes out of your mouth is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is what is in writing."
*Big dopey grin from sales dweeb* While I walked away happily - I enjoy wasting salespeople's time when I have nothing better to do.
I live in Finland and I can't understand what is going on in all those countries where they start charging more while giving less. I wanted to get an extra set of text messages in my mobile package. So the guy looks at my info and says "I see you have the '500 minutes + 100 text messages' package and a 3G package on top of that. Let's improve on that." The result was that I have those 2 packages for the price I used to pay for just the minutes+texts. Making my 3G (1/3rd of the price of the old agreement) 'free', really. And there's no data limit. Maybe it's the advantage of having a 'large' country with a big network, but very few people.
Here's the secret to immortality:
Unfortunately, even when they are up-front about their bandwidth management policy, sometimes they make it so complex that it's still hard to know if you're complying. Check out the policy for my ISP, Virgin Media. Props to them for publishing the policy, although you do have to keep checking that it hasn't changed while you weren't looking. But give me a break - two different periods during which traffic is metered, one including an upstream cap, one not, with different levels in each. Plus separate DPI-based management of P2P "between 5pm and midnight on weekdays and midday and midnight on weekends". And if you do exceed one of the caps, they throttle you to 25%, which would be fine, except that however they've implemented that throttling, it makes your connection almost unusable. Download a game from Steam at the wrong time, and you might basically lose the ability to stream video from the web for the rest of the day. Fun.
Oh no... it's the future.
The thing here in Finland is that usually the upload/download speed is limited, not the amount of data you can use. E.g. I'm Saunalahti-customer and they offer this mobile broadband-thing in various "sizes." The smallest one, the Mini, costs 4.99€ a month, has absolutely no throttling or data cap, but the speed is limited to 512KB/s. I think such pricing works great and there is absolutely no worries of going over the cap. Oh, and before someone asks: no, you're not required to sign a 2-year contract or anything, you can end the contract whenever you wish.
That said I have full package myself; no caps, no throttling, and I can upload/download at full available speed. It still costs only 15€ a month, so it's still tens of times better than anything those poor Amercans are gettin'!
Big point missing here is that unlimited plans are no longer offered to new customers. They exist solely as grandfathered plans. So this brings up the question, why offer grandfathering anyways? Can't they issue a sunset clause a year in advance and then gradually fade them away? I'd wager not that many of the unlimited customers would leave.
The letter would say, "You are currently on an unlimited plan. Your actual usage is $$$. Under our new plan starting next year, your new cost would be $$$." By far the largest fraction of their users would stay.
(Yes, I'm disgruntled that I can't get an ATT unlimited plan because I joined too late).